Good Morning, and welcome to Counselor Weekly! Like Valentines Day, it's full of love for counselors and mental health professionals. Hope you all had a Happy Valentines Day yesterday!

Thanks again for being part of the community!

Until I have an official sponsor, looks like I'm the sponsor!

I'm launching a new site in the next couple weeks and you can sign up to be notified when it's ready to go! Just click HERE, or the photo above and it will take you right to the site. If you are an LPC Supervisor in Texas (sorry, starting in Texas only and will look at options for other states down the road), or a potential Supervisee looking for a Supervisor, this is the place for you! It's a directory for LPC Supervisors to market their services by listing their information so that potential Supervisees can connect with them and hopefully find a perfect match! If you have any questions, click REPLY to this email and I can answer any questions you have. Thanks again for allowing me this personal promotion! 🙏

So let's get to it!

Today is 2/15/23 and it's Singles Awareness Day! Yesterday was all about being in love and in a relationship (and flowers, candy, chocolate, etc.). For you single folks, today is your day! Get out there and celebrate! Who knows, you might be celebrating Valentines Day next year?

Here's the short and skinny of today's newsletter:

• Websites: an Introduction and Options Available

• Interesting articles related to mental health

• Statistic of the week

• Cat Photo

Websites: 101

Yes, you NEED a website if you are in private practice. Even if you already have a website, if you intend to have self-paying high quality clients, it needs to look good. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to teach you about websites. What works. What doesn't. And everything in between.

First off: Why doesn't everyone have a website to market their business? A couple main reasons:

• Technologically challenged

• Overwhelmed with the process

• Expensive

• Lazy

I can't tell you how many people I know in this field without a website. If that's you, it's okay. The next few weeks will get you started.

Let's start with confronting those reasons people don't create a website:

• This is very common... feeling like you don't have the technical skills to create a site. Fortunately, there are a ton of options!

  • First option: hire a web designer. You can pay someone to take care of the whole process and they will hand over a fully functional site. Positive side: it will be unique and really nice. Down side: it's EXPENSIVE 💵 💰!! Not to hate on site developers, but charging $10,000 or more for a website is ridiculous. Plus, it's your problem to deal with after they turn it over to you, or you'll have to pay more money for any changes made.

  • Second option: use one of the cookie cutter sites like Therapy Sites. Positive side: very simple to get started. Not super cheap, but relatively affordable. Down side: there's very little you can modify. It will be just like everyone else's site with your picture and info instead of theirs. Also, many of these sites don't let you take any of your information with you if you decide to leave their platform, so you would be starting over from scratch if you ever wanted to do something different (not all these sites do this, but make sure you do your due diligence).

  • Third option: use a website builder like Squarespace. There's many other options as well such as Wix and Weebly. I prefer Squarespace (here's one of my sites made using Squarespace), but they are all worth checking out. Positive side: cost effective, you control your site, very easy to set up and you can modify the site to make it your own. Down side: takes a little bit of elbow grease to create the site, but it is fairly easy to get the hang of once you get started.

Next week, I'll highlight some specific examples of each type so you have a better idea of each option.

And now some interesting articles:

Asking One Simple Question Can Entirely Change How You Feel

Really interesting article you can share with clients. Relates to teach clients how to "affect label" to reduce negative emotions.

Cognitive Bias Cheat Sheet

Save this one 💾 ! The author does an excellent job of breaking down the cognitive biases into 4 basic problems:

988: National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Launches New 3-Digit Number

If you're a professional counselor, or work in mental health, this is extremely important! Unfortunately, suicidal ideation is fairly common in our field. Make sure your clients are aware that they now only have to dial 988 to reach the suicide lifeline. Clients can also text 988 as well. Having a much simpler way to ask for help could make a huge difference in saving lives.

Statistic of the Week:

• In 2020, suicide accounted for the loss of more than 45,979 American lives in 2020, nearly double the number of lives lost to homicide.

  • source: MentalHealth.gov

And, Finally the Cat Picture

Wild West Tabby! By my son, Cole.